It seemed at first to be a scene from an American remake of Carry On Spying. Ryan Fogle, said to be a young CIA agent attached to the US embassy in Moscow, was caught wearing a blond-streaked wig and baseball cap, carrying a compass, sunglasses, a pocket knife, map of the Russian capital, and wads of €500 notes.

According to the FSB, Fogle was trying to recruit a Russian intelligence agent responsible for the North Caucasus, over the phone. Fogle was said to be trying to give his potential recruit instructions on how to use an anonymous Gmail account, proposing an initial payment of $100,000, and $1m a year for providing information to the CIA in the future.

Fogle's arrest was captured on video by the FSB. The Russian government could not have believed its luck. Setup or not, the episode shows that even in these days of sophisticated surveillance techniques and cyber warfare, there is still room, a need even, for old-fashioned spies. And spies are not always as cool and subtle as they pretend to be.

In 2006, MI6 agents planted a "spy rock" in a Moscow park, a device they used for electronic communications with their contacts. It was soon discovered by Russian counter-intelligence officers – unlike the artificial brick Oleg Gordievsky, the KGB double agent recruited by MI6, used to hide thousands of pounds for his contacts in London.

Gadgets rarely beat the old-fashioned honey trap, as Marcus Wolf, former head of East Germany's foreign intelligence, demonstrated so effectively with his teams of "Romeo" spies, and blackmail. And money, British spymasters say – and this could be a lesson for the CIA – is not as sure a weapon as ideology or political conviction. For money attracts greed and greed is not a good motivator for a spy.

Fogle may have been set up, a perennial risk for spy recruiters. The episode allowed po-faced Russian officials to claim: "While our two presidents have reaffirmed their willingness to expand bilateral co-operation … such provocative cold war-style actions do not contribute to building mutual trust."

Yet every country has its spies, as Moscow, Washington and London know full well. History is littered with tit-for-tat expulsions – the most recent between US and Russia occurred three years ago, when the FBI announced arrests of a network of 10 alleged Russian "sleeper spies" in the US. They were sent back to Russia and swapped with four alleged American spies held by Moscow.

The world's second oldest profession will never be redundant. Donald Maclean, one of Britain's famous Ring of Five Cambridge spies, is said to have compared spying with cleaning public lavatories: somebody had to do it. The Fogle case suggests simply that some spies need better training.